I've established a few concepts and areas of focus on there, four things that I think show off my skills, interests, and strengths. I've also included a big boy Artists Statement on there, in case anyone wants to understand the larger reasons of what I'm trying to express (if you're into that kind of thing, which you should be.)

Selling isn't the right word. There are veritable gangs of flower salesmen, and they are pushy, insistent beyond comprehension. I throw pesos at them just from fear. I gave this gentleman some pesos for his time, no flowers, and asked if he wouldn't mind posing for a few pictures. They commute from deep in the city or the outskirts, where they pick up real roses and fake plastic ones, then hop a bus to the tourist zones and hotel strips where the monied tourists and rich foreigners hang out, ready and willing to pay too much for a rose.

He set fire to graffiti on paper outside a dairy queen in Mexico. A street artist, with spattered stereo speakers and a manager behind him, passing a quarry of pictures in front of him, showing off, setting fire to paint fumes while creating a postcard of a mountain sunset.

Bloodsport 7 & 8 (Things do not go well for the Bull) Hey, guess what, the Bull loses every time. However, the stadium we're at was named after a guy who DIED in the arena. Which tends to happen when you're fighting 900 lbs. of furious beef with two spikes on its head. So the bull gets revenge sometimes. However, the bull does not receive a reprieve at this point. No, the bull bites it no matter what, and then he's dragged out of the arena. Beyond that point, I'm not sure what happens.

Couple of people at the bullfight. An older gent there by himeslf, and a vendor selling fried pigskins, I think. Surprising the number of women there; more than you would see at a football/baseball/basketball game, I'd imagine. A few babies, not too many teens, and ages ranging from mid-20's to old-timers. Lots of hand-tooled cowboy boots, leather gents in cowboy hats, guys in mohawks, really dolled up wives, wealthy guys with designer sunglasses and watches, a blue-collar guy behind me gave me some tequila out of a canteen (ha! no really, this actually happened) and told me some of the rules/structure of bullfighting, American tourists blanching at the gore, more vendors selling cotton candy, guys hawking cigars, cigarettes, gum, peanuts, been vendors tossing around cans of Modelo, and a few rows behind us, a band playing music throughout the entire fight, their tempo matching the action, all goofy-loud and cartoonish-sounding brass instruments, the kind you'd hear in a mexican restaurant or a....well, the cartoon where Bugs Bunny fights a bull.

Bloodsport 2These pictures don't display the full garishness and pomp of bullfighting. That is to say, I'll be putting up some pictures later on that show how bloody bullfighting can be. It is all very normal to be in a stadium, watching a man methodically kill a bull. Here's the strange thing. Bullfighting is broken up into a series of "rounds", determined by the length/size of the blade used to pierce the bull. So you're watching a guy get increasingly closer to the bull, by the virtue of the blades being increasingly smaller, and the target area becoming increasingly exacting. Don't ignore this: you're with 2,500 people watching a man on a horse killing a bull for everyone's enjoyment. I'm not ready to explore the implications quite yet, but I should point out that I watched the bullfight the day after the Super Bowl, and the with-the-crowd, shouting, yelling, excited thrill of physical action feelings are very similar. The action is different, I don't want to be so shrill to compare football violence and bullfighting. But the FEELING as a member of the crowd is the same, the odd way you're connected to everyone else's tension and breathing, the way you can feel the significance of a moment, of anxiety, then release.